Laurie's World

Have i shared with anyone out there what it’s really like to have a dog in Phnom Penh? It’s like going into mortal combat on every single walk FOUR TIMES PER DAY. 😬

Back home, I used to be able to walk Nichol while carrying a coffee, playing candy crush, talking on the phone, carrying an umbrella, you name it I could do it. Now I need to have absolutely nothing in my hands and absolutely nothing obstructing my complete 100% mobility at all times. I need to watch out for motorcycles, Tuktuks, cars, all kinds and manner of garbage food and bones on the sidewalks, piles of dog shit, other dogs, and if I’m walking past 7 PM at night (especially if god forbid it’s been raining), apparently hordes of cockroaches. The cockroaches come out at night and I’m not exaggerating when I say they are the size of small dogs. So the garbage gets picked up here every day and about 1% of the garbage is in garbage cans, which probably at the end of the day makes no difference. But all the rest of the garbage is just out loose in a bag, not a sealed bag, just a bag. The reason I mentioned the garbage is because I think it attracts rats and cockroaches, but it is also an excellent food source for off leash dogs. They don’t nearly have the restrictions on what they feed dogs here like I have for Nichol. For example I would never give him chicken bones. But they just throw old chicken bones out on the street here and let the dogs get into them.  That’s how a lot of garbage food gets spread all over the place. Myself being a responsible pet owner, I go down to the pet store and buy royal canine dog kibble for my dog at $30 a bag. Local people don’t have that luxury I guess. So they let their dogs eat garbage. The other thing to factor into the adventure is that for as many times as I have walked Nichol since I moved into this apartment, Nichol is the ONLY dog that’s ever on a leash. So while most of the dogs roaming here are “pets” a sum total of 0% of them are leashed. I think I may have mentioned this when I first got here. But the part of town I was in before I occasionally saw an expat like myself with a pet on a leash. But 100% of the dogs where I am now are off leash, (I live in a ‘local’ part of town, not in an expat area) and khmer dogs are big. Really big. Small dogs are not a thing here. So khmer dogs are just plain old BIG, and as all dogs tend to be, very territorial. So the last thing they really like is some new fluffy little non khmer dog walking down the street peeing on all ‘their stuff’. I get it. Nichol is at a distinct disadvantage in this situation, being on a leash, so what I need to do is be extremely aware of my surroundings at all times and be prepared to pick him up in less than two seconds. Needless to say I’m getting very good at this. I did get caught off guard this morning and we were ambushed by two from behind. (Can you say pack mentality??) But per my own rules I had nothing in my hands and so I was able to pick him up very quickly and saved ourselves from almost certainly a squabble or at a minimum, a confrontation. I have learned that there are some streets we just shouldn’t go down as the risk of these encounters are just too high, others are much better choices for us. Like for example I try to avoid “residential streets”. Except for, of course, my street is a residential street, but there is only one dog that we regularly have run into on our street. While the traffic is much worse on what I would call a “commercial Street“ we are much less likely to encounter off leash khmer dogs. So that leaves me with the dubious task of watching out for JUST the dog shit, garbage food, the traffic, and apparently cockroaches! To date in all our walks, I’ve only seen one roadkill rat, and two live rats. Not gonna lie I was more concerned about encountering rats than cockroaches here, so this is a reverse of what I was expecting. I just wish he would Pee on his little patch of Astroturf on the balcony so we could reduce the number of times I have to go through this. To date that has not occurred! 🤦🏻‍♀️

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2022 at 3:06 am and is filed under It’s a new era 2022. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.